Microsoft's Surface Hub 2 is a Teams-powered giant tablet that creates its own video wall

Microsoft plans to send a next-generation Surface Hub 2 in 2019, boasting a smaller, lighter, extra modular design that will inspire employees to proportion the display screen, in addition to their notes and information.

Announced Tuesday, Microsoft stated the brand new 50.Five-inch Surface Hub 2 will boast a “4K plus” show within the conventional three:2 ratio of Surface gadgets. It will weigh between 25 and 35 kilograms (55 and 77 kilos), making it smaller and lighter than the former Surface Hub. Ryan Day, a spokesman for the corporate, described the adjustment within the design as “transport a TV, no longer a piano.”

Just as the unique Surface Hub’s 82-inch, 4K show blew customers away, two components at the Surface Hub 2 must do the similar. One is a rolling easel-like stand for a unmarried unit, and the opposite is the facility to mount 4 Surface Hub 2s subsequent to each other, growing a huge wall of pixels.

Microsoft

Up to 4 Surface Hub 2s may also be fastened along one every other, or a unmarried hub may also be put on a rolling easel.

What this implies to you: Like the unique Surface Hub, don’t be expecting to pick out up the Surface Hub 2 out of your native electronics retailer. Remember how the Hub works: you prepare a assembly, stroll into the room, and provide in your colleagues in the neighborhood and remotely by way of dead-simple Skype video calls, whiteboarding, and different gear. It’s a forged, fascinating thought, although as a stressed tool it might probably’t be as cell as Millennials are. Nevertheless, the 1st Hub was once spectacular, and the Hub 2 seems to be sharp as neatly.

Mark Hachman / IDG

What the Microsoft Surface Hub 2 developed from: the unique Surface Hub.

A Surface for the convention room

Microsoft debuted the first-generation Surface Hub in January, 2015, on the outstanding tournament that additionally offered the arena to the HoloLens. More than a 12 months later, the corporate shipped the monstrous 82-inch show for $22,000, obviously pricing it for undertaking budgets. (A 55-inch model was once about $nine,000.)

The Surface Hub 2 interface, as proven on this Microsoft demonstration video.

Microsoft’s unique Surface Hub was once quite rudimentary, with Skype and whiteboarding because the go-to apps. But as Microsoft’s thought of the administrative center has developed, the Surface Hub 2 might be a key part of what Microsoft now calls the “clever edge,” a catch-all time period for the PCs, telephones, and different gadgets that will interface with the “clever cloud” of Microsoft’s apps and products and services, Day stated. With the Surface Hub 2, Microsoft’s seeking to allow what it calls “immersive collaboration,” permitting as many of us get admission to to the tool as conceivable.

Although Microsoft didn’t speak about it, the brand new Surface Hub 2 will it seems that come with a new thumb-driven interface that can transfer between quite a lot of apps.

“The atmosphere round us is moving – in opposition to open places of work, huddle rooms and staff paintings areas – and in 3 years part the worldwide team of workers might be cell,” Panos Panay, Microsoft’s newly-appointed leader product officer, wrote in a weblog put up. “It’s a thrilling time to be within the gadgets trade, for the reason that advent of latest shape components and device studies won’t handiest lead us to paintings in new tactics, but additionally in new areas designed for collaboration.”

The Surface Hub 2 received’t be battery-powered, although Microsoft’s no longer pronouncing precisely what era will energy it. It can have Wi-Fi. When fastened on a wall, as much as 4 Surface Hub 2s may also be daisy-chained, permitting them to serve as one by one, or challenge a cohesive image that straddles a couple of Surface Hub 2. Day known as this “tiling.”

Microsoft

Note that two of the Surface Hub 2s have modular cameras hooked up to the highest, by way of a USB-C interface.

Your Browser Do not Support Iframe

Though the Hub 2 will run Microsoft’s Whiteboard and Skype apps, as the 1st Surface Hub did, Teams would be the centerpiece of the brand new Surface Hub 2. Microsoft has apparently made Teams its backchannel app for engaging in conferences, serving as a approach to glue workers and the quite a lot of repositories of data, reminiscent of Trello or Azure, that the trade can get admission to. “I believe that Teams will basically be the best way you’ll wish to paintings inside it, to get the entire capability,” Day stated.

Like the 1st Hub, far off customers will be capable of hook up with the Surface Hub 2 by way of different Surface gadgets and PCs. But the brand new Hub, just like the outdated, was once made for in-person interplay. That contains a new, thick Surface Hub 2 Pen—one of the most new options Microsoft is confirming, although no longer in point of fact explaining.

“With Hub, other people love the pretty however they liked the interplay and the worth they were given from getting out in their chairs,” Day stated.

Each Hub 2 will come with a 4K digicam for Skype, however customers will log in the use of a fingerprint reader. The cameras might be modular, and can plug in by way of USB-C. They can rotate because the Hub 2 rotates from panorama to portrait mode and vice versa. Because two customers can log in immediately, the Surface Hub 2 will permit two customers to collaborate on a challenge.

In this state of affairs, Day defined, one worker may provide a PowerPoint deck or analysis paper to every other worker, mentioning the unique presentation and in all probability some unique analysis. The different may give a contribution information that she had accumulated, Day stated. Though Microsoft already permits two or extra customers to collectively edit a record in Word or different Office apps, this takes collaboration to every other stage, Day defined.

Microsoft

Being ready to speak with far off customers, by way of Skype, as though they’re within the room is crucial capacity of the Microsoft Surface Hub 2.

In its video, Microsoft intentionally selected to turn the Hub 2 with a Skype window open that displayed the far off caller on the similar top and eye stage because the consumer. That’s a capacity that the unique Hub introduced, too, however Microsoft sees this as one of the most understated however vital mental components to inspire collaboration between far off customers. Far-field mics obviously select up their conversations.

Microsoft isn’t pronouncing precisely what model of Windows the Surface Hub 2 will run—partly, after all, as a result of via 2019 it’s conceivable that the corporate will have launched one or two unannounced characteristic updates. Currently, the Surface Hub is powered via the Windows 10 Creators Update—two variations at the back of the present April 2018 Update that powers PCs. Day stated the Surface Hub 2 will run a “variant” of the standard Windows 10 OS, because it does nowadays, together with a one-touch shortcut to Teams.

Microsoft

Is this the following access in Microsoft’s roadmap?

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t plan to proportion additional main points of the Surface Hub 2 till later this 12 months, together with the cost. Day allowed that it could be “aggressive with what’s in marketplace nowadays.” Remember the $nine,000 MSRP for the 55-inch model of the first-generation hub.

Some unanswered questions linger. Though Microsoft is pronouncing the Surface Hub 2 in time for companies to start out making plans for purchases a 12 months or two out, some—no longer all—of those features will come to the unique Surface Hub. It’s additionally no longer transparent what kind of smarts Microsoft will be capable of upload to the Hub 2, when it’s a characteristic replace or two at the back of—take into accout, the unique didn’t even send with Cortana enabled. And after all, we don’t have any thought of the parts inside of.

Interestingly, Microsoft didn’t sing their own praises the Surface Hub 2 inside of its “convention room of the long run” demonstration at Build, its contemporary developer convention. Instead, it selected to make use of a prototype desktop tool that used Microsoft’s cognitive products and services, and may each see and listen to. Regarding that tool, Day stated he had not anything additional to proportion.

“I don’t wish to verify or deny what’s going to be to be had in the case of that,” Day stated of the tool, which he known as a “thought.” “We’ll have extra to speak about [that device] this autumn.”

To remark in this article and different PCWorld content material, discuss with our Facebook web page or our Twitter feed.